Pubdate: Sat, 19 Jan 2002
Source: Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
Copyright: 2002sThe Advertiser Co.
Contact:  http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1088
Author: Todd Kleffman

DRUG COURT WINS FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE

A $150,000 Grant Will Keep The Program Up Another Year

After nearly going bust, Montgomery County's Drug Court is on the road to 
recovery.

The program, established three years ago to steer drug offenders away from 
prison and into productive lives, stopped taking on new participants in 
December after federal funding ran out. District Attorney Ellen Brooks 
seemed ready to write Drug Court's obituary.

"I thought it had tremendous potential, but when you lose your money, you 
lose your mechanism to do this, and you have to rely on a Band-Aid 
approach," said Brooks, whose office prosecutes cases in Drug Court.

But officials say community-based, treatment-intensive corrections programs 
such as Drug Court are the wave of the future as Alabama seeks to relieve 
the stress on its overcrowded prison system by having nonviolent offenders 
serve their sentences closer to home. There, they can work, support their 
families, pay taxes and get their lives back on track.

So letting Drug Court fail wasn't considered an option, especially in 
Montgomery County, which supplies more than its share of the state's prison 
population. The county's 15th Judicial Circuit sends 282 people to prison 
per 100,000 population, second only to the 289-per-100,000 rate in Russell 
County's 26th Judicial Circuit, according to Department of Correction 
records from 1995 to 1998. The state rate is 178 per 100,000 population.

"We've got plenty of people going to prison who could be punished right 
here in the community," said Alan Tapley, executive director of the 
Sentencing Institute, a nonprofit, state-funded agency based at Auburn 
University Montgomery.

At the urging of Circuit Judge Charles Price, who presides over the 15th 
Judicial Circuit, the Sentencing Institute will supply $150,000 to keep 
Drug Court afloat another year. Tapley said he expects to find recurring 
state and federal money to fund the program after that.

Program benefits visible

Price was no big fan of Drug Court when it started in 1998 with a $399,000 
grant from the Department of Justice. He described himself as "a 
penitentiary man" who believes someone should do the time if he commits the 
crime.

But with substance abuse connected to roughly 70 percent of all crime, 
Price said he has come to realize the wide-ranging benefits of getting 
offenders into effective treatment programs rather than prison.

"It helps people overcome their addictions and get on with their lives so 
that they don't have to keep committing crimes to support their addiction," 
he said.

"They are still in prison, they are just serving their time outside the walls."

Indeed, Drug Court is no country club. In exchange for a guilty plea, a 
participant can have the felony conviction erased from his record if he 
completes the stringent yearlong program that places a premium on personal 
responsibility. Those who pick up a new charge or fail to show steady 
progress toward rehabilitation are terminated from the program and 
sentenced to prison.

Praise and penalties

District Judge Lynn Bright presides over the Friday Drug Court sessions 
like a mother trying to raise difficult children. Participants who have 
made their treatment sessions on time or found a job earn praise and 
encouragement.

"Mr. Wright, you are doing great. I'm proud of you," Bright told one 
participant recently. "Just keep it up until the end. Good luck to you." 
Those who are late for a drug test or suffer a relapse catch at least a 
stern lecture, if not jail time.

"Ms. Gilliland, I'm just tired of being lied to," Bright told another 
participant who had failed a drug test. "You are paving the way to Tutwiler 
(prison) for yourself. You've got 10 days to serve in the county jail to 
see if you can get yourself straightened out."

Along with regular appearances before Bright, participants undergo drug 
tests three times a week and must go to treatment three times a week during 
the program's early stages. They also are required to pay restitution, work 
a full-time job, get a driver's license, do 50 hours of community service 
work and pay $1,700 in fees before they can graduate.

A tough sell

Takeo Jackson, 25, came into Drug Court as a casual drug user who had never 
had a full-time job or a driver's license. Rather than be stuck with a 
felony for two marijuana convictions, he opted for Drug Court and graduated 
in May as a changed man with a full-time job and ambitions to attend college.

"It forced me to look at myself and where I was going," said Jackson, who 
works at Harbin's-Stern Brothers Office Furniture. "It was like 'OK, Keo. 
You got to get right. This program will benefit you in a lot of ways if you 
just do it.' Something clicked inside and I just decided to make it work. 
It wasn't that hard after that."

Despite such reviews, Drug Court is not an easy sell. Many nonviolent 
offenders know they are likely to get probation rather than prison and that 
supervision under probation officers with heavy caseloads is much less 
stringent than Drug Court.

"Probation is the easy way out," said Dari Oberbeck, executive director of 
the Montgomery Area Court Referral Program, a state-contracted agency that 
oversees Drug Court as well as drunken-driving programs in Montgomery, 
Autauga and Elmore counties.

"We have to try and recruit people for Drug Court from the jail, and it's 
tough," Oberbeck said. "You have to find someone who is motivated to turn 
their life around."

Measuring success

Just from the numbers, the Drug Court hasn't been especially successful at 
turning lives around. Of the 126 people who have entered the program, only 
30 have graduated, while 22 have been terminated and sent to prison and 10 
more are AWOL. The rest are still active in various stages of the program.

When the federal grant expired last year, only 14 people had completed the 
program - an unimpressive return on a $373,000 investment, Oberbeck said.

The program was in disarray when his office was brought in to manage it in 
2000. Then, Oberbeck said, Drug Court suffered from poor management, high 
turnover among key personnel and a general lack of direction by the 
program's judicial, treatment, prosecutorial and management arms.

Oberbeck assigned one of his most accomplished case managers, Cheryl Plato, 
to the program and started pressing to collect fees from participants who 
lagged behind in payments.

The result, Oberbeck said, was that "Drug Court started off slow but was 
just getting on a roll" when the federal grant ran out last fall.

The $150,000 from the Sentencing Institute will provide enough money for 30 
new participants to enter the program.

Putting Drug Court on stable financial footing is only the first part of a 
plan to create a model community-based corrections program, the Sentencing 
Institute's Tapley said.

He and Price indicated they are close to securing state and federal money 
to not only underwrite Drug Court but also create a 50-bed facility that 
could treat nonviolent addicts locally instead of sending them to prison 
for treatment.

Tapley estimated that keeping an inmate in an Alabama prison costs roughly 
$10,000 a year, compared to only $3,000 in a community-based program.

"In Alabama, we get our people treatment in prison, and that's much too 
late, not to mention a foolish expense for taxpayers," he said. "Someone 
with authority has to intervene in the addiction situation early on. That's 
the future."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart